Call for the next issue of ENGAGE!, “Homelessness and Housing Insecurity: Community Solutions”
As we understand the realities of 2024’s first quarter, expectations are being shattered with the news of rising inflation, again. Elevated housing costs continue to accelerate and worsen conditions surrounding residents facing eviction, homelessness, increasing legal and financial constraints, on top of a myriad of other structural barriers to accessing the growing prosperity only available to the wealthiest Americans. This issue seeks submissions to envision a future that addresses these problems, along with those associated with housing inequality related to the intersectionality of age and race and refugees facing displacement due to war and famine.
Meanwhile, the policy environment surrounding low-income housing continues to tax the emotional and intellectual capacities of our municipal and state leaders. This is leaving many American communities stuck in a wicked gridlock polarized by deeply felt differences in personally held values and frameworks of legislators, governors, mayors, and change agents. In his widely accepted treatise “Homelessness is a Housing Issue”, Greg Colburn (2022) detailed how the leading predictor of homelessness is a limited number of vacant homes within any given community. Not only did Colburn provide the field with a common sense and measurable conclusion, but also pointed to the existence of a structural issue caused by the same leaders who run city halls, state legislative bodies, and executive branches across the nation.
For housing, innovation is deeply necessary, but the collaboration required to solve this signature social condition has become seemingly impossible. Positive deviators piecing together answers to the American housing tragedy are abound in neighborhood leadership circles, court watchers, tenant advocates, and landlord advocates across the country. If a silver lining exists for housing in America, it is the upswell of young, emerging leaders coming to the table demanding better housing for future generations. The nation’s grassroots leadership muscle is being put to the test unearthing creativity, resiliency, and transformative interventions.
The call for the November issue of ENGAGE! invites community/university collaborating researchers who are addressing housing and homelessness to contribute to the upcoming issue. Submissions should be made by September 15th, 2024. The journal is encouraging social program developers, grassroots innovators, policy leaders, activists, community and faith-based service providers, scholars and others to contribute as we advance community engaged and community based participatory research.
Colburn, G., & Aldern, C. P. (2022). Homelessness is a housing problem: How structural factors explain US patterns. Univ of California Press.
For detailed submission guidelines go to https://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/ENGAGE/about/submissions.
The editors invite inquiry about this issue: https://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/ENGAGE/about/contact
